With that said, do you see any possibility that Giuliani/Trump engaged in seemingly nefarious activity regarding Ukraine to spur impeachment proceedings?

Yes. If you look at a timeline of events, the intent is clear. I think this is going to be the beginning of the end, and it will be because of Trump's overconfidence in his ability to remain unchecked by wearing people down with his chaos and "unprecedented" actions.

The acting director of national intelligence just showed how corrupt the Trump administration is

Paul Waldman
Opinion writer
September 26, 2019 at 1:22 p.m. EDT

“I believe that this matter is unprecedented,” said acting director of national intelligence Joseph Maguire in his opening statement to the House Intelligence Committee on Thursday. It’s hard to argue with that. And the testimony he gave made clear — perhaps unintentionally — just how thoroughly infected with corruption the entire executive branch has become under President Trump.

Precisely because Maguire does not appear to be like some of Trump’s other appointees — not an amoral conspiracy theorist like Michael Flynn, nor a loyalist willing to brazenly deceive the public and twist government to the president’s purposes like Attorney General William P. Barr — he showed how poisonous this president is.

You probably hadn’t heard of Maguire before today. I have no idea what his political views are, but by all accounts even Democrats were somewhat relieved when Trump made him acting DNI, because while Trump might have appointed some political hack or pathetic lickspittle to that post, Maguire has a long and distinguished career in the military and the government.

There are, without question, legitimate questions one can raise about some of the decisions Maguire made as he handled the extraordinary whistleblower complaint about Trump’s effort to get the government of Ukraine to dig up dirt on a potential 2020 opponent. But the picture that emerged from Maguire’s testimony was of a person of integrity who found himself at sea in a government where in every direction he turned, he confronted institutions Trump had corrupted.

As Maguire testified, when he received the whistleblower’s complaint from the inspector general of the intelligence community, it was like nothing he or anyone else had ever seen — “unprecedented,” as he said multiple times. One of the first questions he confronted was whether the conversation between Trump and the Ukrainian president would be protected by executive privilege and thus shouldn’t be passed to Congress.

“Such calls are typically subject to executive privilege,” Maguire said. “As a result we consulted with the White House Counsel’s Office and were advised that much of the information of the complaint was in fact subject to executive privilege.”

In other words, Maguire’s first stop, upon receiving a breathtaking set of accusations about Trump and his White House, was … Donald Trump’s White House.
But it goes even deeper than that. I want to point to this portion of the whistleblower’s complaint:

White House officials told me that they were ‘directed’ by White House lawyers to remove the electronic transcript from the computer system in which such transcripts are typically stored [...] Instead, the transcript was loaded into a separate electronic system that is otherwise used to store and handle classified information of an especially sensitive nature. One White House official described this act as an abuse of this electronic system because the call did not contain anything remotely sensitive from a national security perspective.

This is an extraordinary allegation, that White House lawyers took steps to conceal Trump’s phone conversation from others in the government, going outside normal procedure to do so.

Upon seeing this complaint, Maguire felt that he had no choice but to find out if the president was going to invoke executive privilege. So to determine how to handle accusations against, among others, White House lawyers, he had to check with … White House lawyers.

Next, Maguire believed he had to determine whether, given the contents of the whistleblower complaint, the law did in fact require him to turn it over to Congress. Who would give him this answer? The Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel.

The Justice Department is, of course, run by Attorney General William P. Barr. Who is mentioned in the whistleblower complaint, and whom Trump told the Ukrainian president he should work with in the project to get dirt on Joe Biden. In addition to the OLC decision that Maguire shouldn’t pass the whistleblower complaint to Congress, the question of whether Trump had violated campaign finance laws by seeking something of value from a foreign source was referred to the Justice Department’s criminal division. They quickly said no.

Maguire was questioned about this sequence of events repeatedly by Democratic members of the committee. Here’s what he said at one point:

Only the White House can determine or waive executive privilege. There is no one else to go to. And as far as a second opinion, my only avenue of that was to go to the Department of Justice Office of Legal Counsel.

Again, there are reasons to criticize Maguire’s decisions. But it seems clear that he was operating in good faith, trying to follow procedures and the law at least insofar as he understood it. Yet everywhere he turned, he faced offices and people who were partners in Trump’s degradation of the system’s integrity. It appears that, without any intent to be corrupt, Maguire was swallowed by Trump’s corruption.

In the end, some combination of public pressure and Trump’s own hubristic foolishness in thinking he can get way with anything led to the public release of both a rough transcript of Trump’s phone call and the whistleblower complaint itself. The substance of those two documents is devastating.

Watching Maguire testify, one got the sense that he knows it and is trying to somehow emerge from his service with his integrity and reputation intact. Perhaps he should have known that, when you agree to work for Donald Trump, that’s going to be next to impossible.

With that said, do you see any possibility that Giuliani/Trump engaged in seemingly nefarious activity regarding Ukraine to spur impeachment proceedings?

Yes. If you look at a timeline of events, the intent is clear. I think this is going to be the beginning of the end, and it will be because of Trump's overconfidence in his ability to remain unchecked by wearing people down with his chaos and "unprecedented" actions.

Yeah, I admire your faith in the American public, because they are the final arbiter of this mess with the vote, but I just don't think they will be there.... This will ultimately be a bunch of annoying blah, blah, blah that Trump didn't invite (even though he obviously did) and there will be a collective, meh.

Have you met many Americans................
I think you are referring to the educated class, which is a minority. And I am no advocate of the educated class being "smart" when it comes to the needs of "ordinary" Americans. Ordinary Americans are not stupid. Well, some are stupid and some are definitely racists; just like some educated Americans are "stupid" and some are also most definitely racist. Ordinary, working class/poor americans, who will decide the next election are mostly....fed up. They are hurting and struggling, they don't care about policy. THEY DO NOT CARE ABOUT POLICY. They just want somebody to fix it, don't explain it to me, just FIX IT! They need to have faith, a feeling in their heart, that the candidate they vote for will fix it. A lot of people have that feeling about Trump. Why? Because maybe first you need to break it. No politician seems to take any actions to help, so maybe first it needs to be smashed to smithereens...who could do that?

They, the good/non-racist ones, don't really want to smash it, but it is the only choice they see. All current Dem candidates seem like all the others with empty promises. Blah, blah, blah plan this, plan that, heard it all before....... they want someone to believe. Demonstrate you know exactly what the problems are, and say you will fix it in a convincing fashion. Demonstrate that you REALLY understand, they can see straight through the political PR crap. They want to feel something, not learn something. I would argue that all people vote based on a feeling, there is no logic involved.

I really think it's important to understand that it's just not correct that the only people who understand how fucked up Trump is are educated or "non-ordinary" people.

The biggest problem with the presidential vote is basically that New York and California combined have a major portion of the Democratic vote, which is weakened significantly by the electoral college. It's not that Americans aren't progressive, it's that most Americans live on the coasts and their votes aren't worth as much as the ones in the middle. It's a systemic issue, not an issue of the actual values of actual Americans.

Where the values question does come in to play is in the small number of people in those much smallers states whose political allegiance is fluid. That is a very, very small number of people, and that's who was targetted by Cambridge Analytica and others to get Trump elected.

Whoever the Democratic candidate is, they just need to figure out how to beat the Republican strategists and foreign interventions in convincing relatively few people across a well-recognized set of states to vote for them and against Trump. Consider that many people who supported Bernie Sanders flipped and supported Trump. There's no reason to believe that the reverse can't happen, precisely because the sort of people who could go from democratic socialist to ... Trump... are likely to be fairly easily manipulated. It's just a matter of good strategy and the right focus.

It's really a simple game at the bottom: most people are already settled. That's what Mitt Romney meant when he stupidly referred to the 47% who weren't going to be convinced to vote for him:

Mitt Romney wrote:There are 47 percent of the people who will vote for the president no matter what. All right, there are 47 percent who are with him, who are dependent upon government, who believe that they are victims, who believe the government has a responsibility to care for them, who believe that they are entitled to health care, to food, to housing, to you-name-it. That's an entitlement. The government should give it to them. And they will vote for this president no matter what. And I mean the president starts off with 48, 49... he starts off with a huge number. These are people who pay no income tax. Forty-seven percent of Americans pay no income tax. So our message of low taxes doesn't connect. So he'll be out there talking about tax cuts for the rich. ... My job is not to worry about those people. I'll never convince them they should take personal responsibility and care for their lives. What I have to do is convince the 5–10% in the center that are independents, that are thoughtful, that look at voting one way or the other depending upon in some cases emotion, whether they like the guy or not.

His description isn't quite accurate, and it actually goes both ways. 94% of voters, broadly speaking, are always already largely decided (political affiliations in party-politics are basically tribal). Candidates have to convince that remaining six percent to go with them, or else figure out how to mobilize enough new support from the legions of non-voters (of which most are apolitical and thus exceedingly difficult to generate enthusiasm among).

So, again, I don't think this is a matter of the majority of Americans being stupid, or manipulated, or whatever. It's about who can figure out how to successfully work the system in their favour by courting a very small minority of voters in the right places.

Bee, you're rallying cry here that mirrors 16 is people are pissed. Many of those really "good" people who flocked to this empty hope have been fucked by him. Are you saying they'll remain with him?

Anyways, here's a fun table to play with. Interesting that trump has decreased by at least a 20% margin overall in every single state in net approval rating since he took office. He's dropped a bit from a consistent 90% approval of GOP to appx 85%, but I didn't expect much there. What is astounding is just how easy it was for the last GOP to be radicalized to the new GOP in such a short period of time...even with the understanding of the impact of AIles and the tea party's influence beginning in the 90's

Bee, you're rallying cry here that mirrors 16 is people are pissed. Many of those really "good" people who flocked to this empty hope have been fucked by him. Are you saying they'll remain with him?

I hold firm with the 16 rallying cry. I think Trump has far more (secret) fans now than in '16. I agree that there are some disillusioned folks who will sit '20 out because Trump didn't fix stuff, but Trump CANNOT be blamed for lack of trying to break stuff. He's still got those folks solid. These are not "bad" people. I really, really don't think the coastal elite know the type of suffering that is happening out there. It just doesn't come through in their analysis and tone. I know (and they know to some degree) it makes no sense to go for some whack job, but I think they still see the alternative as the same stuff of the last 30-40 years. Give them a third option. Make it based on hope, love and understanding, call it TEAM AMERICA; proclaim no allegiances to anybody but the AMERICAN people (include black people, brown people, white people, poor people, rural people, urban people, middle class people, recent immigrants, long time residents, LGBTQ folks, religious folks, all the people here, there is room for everybody - and stress a fair/humane immigration/refugee process) ...... and they will win.

Anyways, here's a fun table to play with. Interesting that trump has decreased by at least a 20% margin overall in every single state in net approval rating since he took office. He's dropped a bit from a consistent 90% approval of GOP to appx 85%, but I didn't expect much there. What is astounding is just how easy it was for the last GOP to be radicalized to the new GOP in such a short period of time...even with the understanding of the impact of AIles and the tea party's influence beginning in the 90's

I agree it can be fun, but it's hard to talk demographic tendencies with any sort of empirical authority. I am guilty of this myself. I think ultimately polls suck, I think Hype would agree with that. Polls are based on methodology of questions, ingrained tendencies, fox news fix for the day and what the subject had for breakfast that morning. None of it has much to do with how that person will vote on Nov 3, 2020, it's either known, or a complete wild card. It seems to me that polls can't track that. I am sure polls are good for something, just not predicting elections.....

I think ultimately polls suck, I think Hype would agree with that. Polls are based on methodology of questions, ingrained tendencies, fox news fix for the day and what the subject had for breakfast that morning. None of it has much to do with how that person will vote on Nov 3, 2020, it's either known, or a complete wild card. It seems to me that polls can't track that. I am sure polls are good for something, just not predicting elections.....

My only concern with polling and data analytics this time around is that, as even Nate Silver failed to adequately realize, even aggregates of all the polls are difficult to distill into an accurate electoral college outcome unless you can somehow take many micro-polls in every single "up-for-grabs possible swing" district in the country and keep track of all of that. But that would be a huge amount of highly complex data. Only Facebook and Google really have the access and means to deal with that kind of thing (hence the use of companies like Cambridge Analytica on the manipulation side of things).

Polls will tell you in broad strokes that most people don't support Trump in most places, but that doesn't tell you how the middle of the country will actually play out.

WASHINGTON, D.C. — More than 300 former national security professionals—many of whom have served administrations of both parties—today issued a public statement commending the Congressional impeachment inquiry and encouraging vigorous efforts to ascertain additional facts and hold President Trump to account, as warranted. . . .

I think anyone who supports trump is fundamentally flawed morally. More so, if they support one or a few "beliefs" and ignore the many others.

I have come into contact recently with trump supporters under forced circumstances. I am fortunate that I rarely have to deal with them. They are religious rights loons under the delusion that muslins and others are evil. They are literally talking points of alternative truths.....no center of reality whatsoever.

I think anyone who supports trump is fundamentally flawed morally. More so, if they support one or a few "beliefs" and ignore the many others.

I have come into contact recently with trump supporters under forced circumstances. I am fortunate that I rarely have to deal with them. They are religious rights loons under the delusion that muslins and others are evil. They are literally talking points of alternative truths.....no center of reality whatsoever.

Hmmmmmm...... as of 2016 there are 63 million people in the United States who are religious right loons under the delusion that muslims and others are evil with no center of reality and fundamentally flawed morally?

THE NATIONAL INTEREST 9:47 A.M.Intelligence Inspector General to GOP: You Know Nothing of My Work
By Jonathan Chait

Last Thursday, Sean Davis of the conservative news site The Federalist broke an explosive revelation. The Intelligence Community had secretly changed a requirement in its whistle-blower statute to allow whistle-blowers to report secondhand allegations, whereas firsthand knowledge had been required before. This suspicious rule change allegedly allowed the whistle-blower to accuse President Trump of misconduct despite lacking firsthand knowledge of said conduct. The shocking exposure of yet another Deep State plot quickly became the foundation for Trump’s defenders as they fanned out across the media.

“The hearsay rule was changed just a short period of time before the complaint was filed,” claimed Senator Lindsey Graham. The whistle-blower “has no firsthand knowledge,” charged Congressman Jim Jordan on CNN, and when host Jake Tapper noted that firsthand knowledge is not required to file a complaint, Jordan shot back that this was only “because they changed the form. You used to.” Meanwhile, Trump demanded, in all caps, “WHO CHANGED THE LONG STANDING WHISTLEBLOWER RULES JUST BEFORE SUBMITTAL OF THE FAKE WHISTLEBLOWER REPORT?”

House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy claimed, “Just days before the Ukraine whistleblower came forward, the IC secretly removed that requirement from the complaint form,” and promised that Republicans would “not rest until we have answers.”

They had answers. They just didn’t like them. Actual experts in intelligence law immediately pointed out that Davis’s reporting was false and was based on a simple misreading of a change in the wording of a form.

Then yesterday, the Intelligence Community’s inspector general, Trump appointee Michael Atkinson, posted a short statement online correcting Davis. Using heavily bureaucratized language and the patient and polite tone city officials use to assure the local gadfly that the water department is not sending alien nodes through his plumbing, the I.G. made a few basic points. First, the rules governing whistle-blowers have not changed. At all.

Second, the I.G. had developed a new form for whistle-blowers to use to file their complaints because the old form may have been confusing. (“[C]ertain language in those forms and, more specifically, the informational materials accompanying the forms, could be read — incorrectly — as suggesting that whistleblowers must possess first-hand information.”) That’s the change Davis seized upon — a clarification of the wording in the submission form, not a change in the requirement.

Third, Atkinson noted that the entire issue is moot because the Trump whistle-blower did have firsthand knowledge. (“The whistleblower stated on the form that he or she possessed both first-hand and other information.”) So no, the law was not changed to allow complaints without firsthand knowledge. And no, this wouldn’t have mattered anyway, because the whistle-blower did have firsthand knowledge.

In a rational world, The Federalist would be publishing mortified corrections and Republicans would be engaged in soul-searching as to how such a simplistic fallacy had gained credence at the highest levels of their party. In a world where the conservative movement had at least some slight attachment to reality, the Federalistas would be quietly slinking away and changing the subject.

But in the actual world, they are continuing to insist they were right all along. The Federalist reporting team has not even developed its own alternative sources. Instead, they are plucking out sentences from the I.G. report that was written to correct their errors and claiming them as vindication.

No! The letter says that the form changed but the requirement did not change. The HOW INTERESTING change is that the I.G. was trying to correct the confusion being spread by right-wing pseudo-journalists and clarified the language in a form, but the underlying requirements to submit a complaint did not change. Also, again, the whistle-blower did have firsthand knowledge, so even if the requirement had been weakened, it would not have had any relevance to this matter.

It’s probably better that Trump’s defenders simply claim the I.G. supports their erroneous stance, because the actual alternative would be for them to decide Atkinson is in cahoots with the Deep State cabal and have him fired and replaced with somebody from Fox News.

If all of this goes down how I think it might, we are in for some real craziness in this country that will dwarf anything we've seen so far.

The next election, and the next president after Trumps additional 4 years in office will be really, really weird/crazy/ass-backwards. That is my prediction.....

We've only barely got started folks...........

This is going to be a really wild ride.

Trump will be impeached by the House, Democrats only with Yeas, maybe a couple Republicans/ not a single Republican will impeach in the Senate and then Trump re-elected easily in 2020, possibly with the popular vote as well.....

Trump re-elected easily in 2020, possibly with the popular vote as well.....

I'm still not sure about this. His election wasn't "easy" the first time, it was surprising and difficult -- he seems to have fallen ass-backward into a strategy that he might not have even expected to work: courting middle-American racists and disaffected blue-collar workers to snag an electoral college victory. The only way he wins again is if that strategy works *again*. But why would it? As much as the narrative of the stupid idiot voting for Trump because he's a brash, sexist, billionaire TV personality sounds right, it doesn't account for sufficiently broad popular support to be likely to win two elections in a row. It was successful once only because no one noticed how that strategy would play out. Now that the strategists all know this, there's no way Democratic party-insiders aren't plotting to stop this. Trump lost by 3 million votes and his polling support was far higher then than it is now. The loud idiots and quiet bigots aren't the only voters, and they certainly aren't a majority of Americans. As I've said multiple times previously: Americans may be racist, but they're far more sexist. Yet, that does seem to be changing. A woman received more votes than a man for President in the last election. This time round, if a woman is the Democratic candidate, they won't be as hated as Clinton was by default, and thus stand a far greater chance of beating a brash dummy. If Biden is the candidate, well, all the polls show he's clearly going to kick Trump's ass, and this stuff about his son is just fodder for the deplorables who were already going to vote Trump.

Trump re-elected easily in 2020, possibly with the popular vote as well.....

I'm still not sure about this. His election wasn't "easy" the first time, it was surprising and difficult -- he seems to have fallen ass-backward into a strategy that he might not have even expected to work: courting middle-American racists and disaffected blue-collar workers to snag an electoral college victory.

It was not easy the first time for sure. But, everything has changed (in his favor I think) for the second time. He is still the same a-hole that he was before, nothing has changed on that front. But, economy is "great", no new wars, pressure on China (Dems have no plan on China that works for blue-collar), action on immigration restrictions (for sure heinous words and intentions, but deeds still seen as in ballpark of "civil"). Sure there are fine lines here and I really do think most people see his words as atrocious. But you put him up against an open-border, "socialist" and a woman to boot. I see a greater than slim possibility of a popular vote win for Trump. Washington will be seen as a total mess with the impeachment, Trump will still be seen as the protest vote, and many Americans will see him as reprehensible, but still on their side at the end of the day.

Disaffected blue-collar workers are key. If the Dem does not focus on them 24-7 and go deep into why Trump's actions have directly harmed them and will continue to, it will be lost. Warren does touch on a lot of these issues, just she will likely get too wrapped up in the media/Trump storm and not be able to control the narrative.

It was successful once only because no one noticed how that strategy would play out. Now that the strategists all know this, there's no way Democratic party-insiders aren't plotting to stop this.

I have seen no evidence that dem-strategists are aware of the vastness of the problem. It's not enough to call Trump a racist and corrupt. That doesn't mean anything to disaffected voters, who are the key block. You are telling them that politicians are corrupt and awful?? NO CRAP!.... they think. Do they understand my problems is what they are thinking. Warren has to include an anti-globalist platform, along with her anti-corporate schtick, or else Dems will lose a huge portion of the blue collar (traditionally solid Democratic!) demographic, and minorities will not come out to save the day.

Trump lost by 3 million votes and his polling support was far higher then than it is now. The loud idiots and quiet bigots aren't the only voters, and they certainly aren't a majority of Americans. As I've said multiple times previously: Americans may be racist, but they're far more sexist. Yet, that does seem to be changing. A woman received more votes than a man for President in the last election. This time round, if a woman is the Democratic candidate, they won't be as hated as Clinton was by default, and thus stand a far greater chance of beating a brash dummy. If Biden is the candidate, well, all the polls show he's clearly going to kick Trump's ass, and this stuff about his son is just fodder for the deplorables who were already going to vote Trump.

Agreed we are FAR more misogynist than racist, and we (like a lot of other people around the world) are pretty racist. That won't help Warren. It will be more about her "socialism" and bookish nature that will be her achilles heel than being a woman this time around I suspect.

If Biden is the candidate, that will be a disaster. By July, delegates will be seriously considering a brokered convention. He would be a complete disaster, and not in a "lucky" way like Trump. I think Trump is very shrewd. I think Biden is truly, not smart. He is "lovable" to some people, but I don't think the public is up for a "George W" type figure for the Dems. I really think people are completely done with status quo. There is only a slim piece of the pie that I think would be eager for that. People just wouldn't show up. And Trumps base would carry it for him. Who are these people who are EAGER for Biden? The "I suppose, OR ELSE!" vote has never, ever won a national election. Name a person who has won the "I suppose" vote? I think you could say H.W. Bush, but he was up against someone worse than even Biden!

Biden's son is just fodder to neutralize Ukraine for Trump. That's it, no one considering voting for Biden cares. The problem is no one is really considering voting for Biden. The not "that guy" candidate never wins. This time would be no different.

What?! You know 'globalist' is a euphemism for Jews, right? Like, this isn't a legitimate platform, it's an antisemitic conspiracy theory about who "runs the world"...

I did make a mistake in using that term. I in no way endorse 'anti-globalist' views. I am referring more in the realm of globalization/neo-liberal policies. I don't have an idea of what that alternative really is, but surely you agree there are problems with neo-liberalism?

What?! You know 'globalist' is a euphemism for Jews, right? Like, this isn't a legitimate platform, it's an antisemitic conspiracy theory about who "runs the world"...

I did make a mistake in using that term. I in no way endorse 'anti-globalist' views. I am referring more in the realm of globalization/neo-liberal policies. I don't have an idea of what that alternative really is, but surely you agree there are problems with neo-liberalism?

As I understand it, 'neo-liberal' is an epithet to refer to people who hold to a weird melange of hijacked Locke and Rousseau via Hajek and Rand, while basically just ignoring Mill and Kant. I.e., they are corporate stooges and not much else. Yes, of course there are problems with deregulation, but globalization isn't necessarily tied to neo-liberalism. International regulations and regulatory bodies are a thing. It's asshats like Trump pulling out of longstanding agreements that threaten to break the valuable side of globalization. In that sense, he's an anti-globalist (and he's also an anti-globalist in the racist sense)... So, nah.